This is a series of discourses that Swamiji gave to
students in the Ashram’s Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy during March and April
1996. In this course Swamiji discusses the true nature of reality—that
everything, including ourselves, exists at all times and at all places; that the
past, present and future are an appearance and are interchangeable; and that
even the smallest particle is in all levels of existence simultaneously—and
guides the student through a profound meditation technique of becoming
established in that awareness, culminating in the highest state of being, the
Absolute.

The reader is taken stage by stage through the levels
of samadhi, and is given a practical explanation of the highest truth behind the
appearance of creation, and of how understanding these facts and applying them
to one’s own perception results in Self-realisation, liberation, moksha.

This is an important book for all sincere spiritual
seekers, who will be benefitted greatly by it.

Welcome to you, all students who have come to
participate in these courses of teaching in the Academy. Perhaps you have not
attended courses of teaching of this kind up to this time, though you must have
had a vague feeling of the benefits that would accrue to you by attending these
classes. Possibly you have a feeling that you will become healthier, more
peaceful, and also more successful in your workaday world. These are common
ideas that may be present in all of you. They are all valid feelings, of course,
and it should be like that.

After participating in the teachings you must
certainly feel better in every way—not only in some way, but in all ways. In
order to have an inkling of what is meant by ‘all ways’, you must also have an
idea of what you are yourself in regard to everything that you need, require and
aspire for in your life. What is it that you are looking for? Anything and
everything—there is nothing that you would not like to have.

If you would like to have every kind of blessedness,
it should be possible for you to prepare yourself as a proper recipient of this
blessedness. The all-sided blessedness can be received only by an all-sided
instrument. If you are a fraction of a person, you will have only a fraction of
blessedness. The amount of sunlight that will enter your room depends upon the
opening through which the sunlight can pass. If there is only a little hole or
slit, only that much light will come to your room. If you are a tiny individual
personality, capable of imbibing into your life only little things, only that
much blessedness will be your fortune. You cannot be small and then ask for so
many things. The world is very big, and it has all resources within itself. The
unhappiness that is usually characteristic of human nature may be attributed to
the limited quantum of the resources of the universe that are available to you.
You would like to have all the blessings of the world, but you do not have such
a large vessel to contain that abundance of blessing that the world can grant
you. Suffice it to say that you must be a large person in order that the large
gift of this world may become your blessing. A little man will get only little
things.

Now, I mentioned that you should be a large person.
People use words such as large-heartedness, whose meaning is clear to you all.
It is not that your physical heart has become very big, but your feelings have
enlarged you so much as to accommodate within you almost everything. You can
feel everything in the world. Your feelings are capable of being friendly with
all the processes of the world. You are a friend of the world; you are a
relative of the whole world process.

Take a little time to think whether you belong to this
world or you are a totally independent person with the freedom to do whatever
you like. Have you any obligation to this world so that you may expect an
obligation from the world in respect of you? Why should you expect any gifts
from the world if you cannot give anything to the world? The process of life is
a phenomenon of interrelationship, cooperative living—a give-and-take policy, we
may say—so that everyone is related to everything in this world. Philosophers
tell us that our physical body is made up of the substance of nature. You think
that nature is outside you, and you are totally outside it. This is not so. The
very building bricks of your personality are the substance of the world outside.
The physicality of your body is the earth principle. The air that you breathe is
the very same air that is in the world outside. The liquid content in your
personality and in your body is the very same as the water principle outside.
The heat in your body is the same as the fire principle outside. There is also
space inside your body; you are not a compact indivisible rock. That space is
the same as the space that is outside. The space that is outside, the air that
is outside, the heat that is outside, the water that is outside, the earth that
is outside, are the substances out of which you are made.

If you analyse this situation, you will wonder how you
are really different from the world. The very stuff of the world is the stuff of
your personality. The world is not merely touching you, it is you. When I utter
this sentence, I have introduced you into the methodology of yoga practice. I
have spoken simple sentences without any kind of technicality about them, but if
you have appreciated the meaning and implication of what I spoke, you are
certainly in a position to appreciate that you are a world individual. What a
joy to feel like that! "How happy I am to be a world individual, and not a tiny
tot helplessly walking on the road. Is it so that the whole world is structured
in my being? What a wonder! If that is the case, the world will give to me
everything that it has!" There is no distance between you and the world. This
consequence will automatically follow from the acceptance of the fact that the
stuff of the world is your stuff. If you deeply ponder over the result that
follows from this kind of contemplation, you will immediately receive a pleasant
shock. It is like the world entering into you. For a few seconds, hold your
breath and imagine what it would be like if the whole substance of the world
dashes against you, enters your veins and arteries, and possesses you completely
so that you are not there, the whole world is there.

This is simply yoga. Do not go to big textbooks. I
shall refer to something deeper in the coming days, but this little thing—this
homely sermon I have given to you in a few minutes—is enough to awaken you from
the so-called turmoils of life in the world to the possibility of an awakening
to a great blessedness before you. ‘Before you’ does not mean tomorrow or after
some time, because the world is not tomorrow, it is here just now.

The world does not come to you tomorrow. There is no
time gap or even space gap between yourself and the world that you wrongly
imagine as something being external to you. You will worship the whole world as
a divinity, if you can properly appreciate the meaning of what I have told you.
The world is a divinity. Traditionally, we consider the whole earth as the
Divine Mother. According to traditional religious practice, when we wake up in
the morning and keep our foot on the surface of the earth, we offer a prayer,
"Mother Earth, please excuse me for keeping my foot on your body. Please excuse
me, O great Divinity who sustains life, who has been sustaining my ancestors and
myself. O great Goddess, I have no alternative than to be on your surface, on
your very breast itself. Please excuse me."

Divinity pervades everywhere. What is called divinity
is the principle of inclusiveness and abolition of exclusiveness. There is
nothing that the earth excludes. Nothing is outside the world. Here is an
obvious example of inclusiveness before you. And if you are inseparable from the
structure of the world, you cannot exclude any reality of life. You are an
inclusive individual, a friendly person, cooperative, loving, charitable. You
belong to everybody, and then everybody will belong to you. You will be a social
stalwart, and a principle of divine blessedness.

This is an inaugural session, and we are not actually
commencing the curriculum of teaching now. This is a session for prayer,
worship, and dedicating ourselves to the great cause initiated by the founder of
this Ashram, Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. You are in a blessed place. You will
be here for some time receiving the graciousness of the great Master of this
institution, and I am sure that you will go back home as a large vessel carrying
blessings to other people. You will be happy, you will be treated in a friendly
way, you will not lack anything, and people will love you. You will not be
discarded. You will feel a wonderful sensation within yourselves that all is
well with you.